The Northwind is a personal website and blog for the exploration of the personal interests, the adventures, the successes, and the trials of its author. You'll find subjects from history, politics, and activism to technology, media, and video games.

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Feb 2 Why I love zombies.

The humble zombie has come a long way in recent years. There's more to the zombie than meets the eye... if you care to dig around under all that decomposing, rotten, dessicated flesh; a deeper fear of the inevitable and being powerless to prevent it. We've all seen the movies and if you take a step back for a moment and analyse him, our friend the zombie is, on the surface at least, a comical foe indeed.

They're stupid, they're shambolic, easily predictable, outwitted and outgunned. Their only weapons are their feeble human extremities - weapons we're all equipped with. They grunt and groan like someone overfed them. On the face of it they should't be a particular threat, easily dealt with by the armed forces and wily zombie-slaying shotgun-toting citizens. Its not even the violence really; while brutal and often depicted as exceptionally gory, undeniably unpleasant we can all imagine far worse and torturous ends to endure. Indeed the fake blood and quivering exposed organs are often more comical than harrowing. All this asside the zombie has a special terror, one rooted in a very thing shred of plausibility and a desperate sense of helplessness.

While there's no proven physical mechanic for the reanimation of a dead corpse, we are aware that zombie-like behaviour can be illicited in animals and humans to varying degrees by infection, infestation or drugs and hypnosis. behaviour can be controlled and directed and we aren't always immediately aware of it's happening. Loss of control is frightening, very frightening when you consider that in losing control you might start to hurt people. Zombies are also subversive. A running theme is the pandemic scenario... where once the threat has been identified the zombies are too numerous to control. You're outnumbered and though individually capable of thwarting a couple of them you're never going to stand up to an entire neighbourhood of flesh eating foot-draggers. There is no victory scenario.

But in the last couple of years the humble zombie has had to up his game. He's angry, feral and fast. The threat of the slow-march of inevitable kibble-ification isn't enough. Now they're faster than you. You can't even escape them anymore.